H2-Oh No!

Stepping into the broom closet that was to be our home for the next two days at Kilronan, a town on Inis Mor, a island on the Aran Isles, we were not the happiest of campers. Imagine four guys packed into a small room, and then imagine the horror of the water shutting off unexpectedly for the rest of the night, and you have our experience. You may be thinking “But wait, no water on a island? How does that work?” You see the problem is that even though the island may be surrounded by water, none of it is acceptable for human use, and it is very hard to bring enough clean water to support an entire chain of islands to the mainland, we were told that there would be no water from 8:30 at night until 8:30 the next morning, something that we could never imagine dealing with back home! After the shock and confusion went away we all realized that cutting back on our water usage wasn’t hard, it may have been different from the norm for us, but it wasn’t impossible to do. The total amount of water that is usable by humans is about 3% of the entire water on this planet, so why do we think that we have an unlimited amount? I myself have been guilty of showers that last way longer than needed, but I never realized that my actions have consequences. Although the water shut off was only during the night time, it is still a sobering wake up call to what can happen if we aren’t careful with our resources, our planet is not a endless supply for us to take from, we must respect it and care for it, or we will not be able to care for ourselves.